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“Señorina, this gesture is so kind, but we cannot accept. It is too generous,” Donvino finally said, the shock wearing off apparently.
She turned her widened eyes to him. “Young man, are you denying a dying woman her last wish?”
He paled, shook his head, and then looked at me as if to help him in some way. I leaned over to peck his flushed cheek, then spoke to Vittoria.
“I’m still…thank you. Thank you so much. We’ll take great care of your home, I promise. And we’ll fill it with love, that I assure you,” I said as I reached over the table to take her fragile hand in mine.
“Good. It is all yours. All the furnishings. Everything. Feel free to decorate as you wish but do make sure that you take an hour every day to walk out to the river to watch the sun set on Florence. You will have a good view from the back yard. Have some wine as you do so, and perhaps a pipeful of tobacco from Signor Carafo’s shop two blocks over. His Forte blend is strong with a pleasant bouquet.”
“We’ll enjoy the sunsets every night with some wine and think of you,” I assured her.
“Good, that is all I ask. Oh, and that you keep learning our language. You do very well now but your accent is still atrocious,” my tutor said, which got a soft chuckle from the table.
“Thank you, señorina, so much, for the home. It is…beyond generous,” Donvino quietly said, and I squeezed his knee.
“Pah, it is just a house. Filling it with art, music, dogs, maybe children, and love is what makes it a home. Ginerva, I’m tired. Shall we go to the salon to read?” Señorina Cappello asked, and my aunt was quick to comply. Donvino and I both rose when the women did and offered to help, but both told us to sit down and eat since they were perfectly capable of walking into the villa.
Once the women and their pets had departed the garden, I sat there in the sun, trying to parse everything that had just taken place in the past fifteen minutes. Earnest was still snoozing away by the busy bird bath. Busy now that Lucia had gone indoors with my aunt.
“I feel like Cinderella minus the singing mice,” I said after a moment.
“I feel like…” Donvino was clearly unable to express himself.
“Do you feel like our future is slowly presenting itself?”
“I feel unable to say what I feel. Giving us a house? That is the most generous thing I have ever seen. Why would she do that? I’m just a hired hand.”
“No, my love, you are so much more than a hired hand. You are the man of my dreams.” I plucked his hand from the table and raised it to my lips. His knuckles were rough, yet warm.
He smiled shyly, then threaded his fingers through mine. “Yes, I am that man. And you are the man who has my heart in his hand. Arlo, we have a home!”
“I know! And it’s on the river. Oh, Donvino, you can row every day. You’ll be able to paddle under the Ponte Vecchio every morning. It’s the prettiest sight on the whole of the Arno so the tourist magazines say.”
“The tourist magazines are wrong. You, Arlo Bonetti, are the prettiest sight on the whole of the Arno.”
And just like that, I fell even more in love with the man.
I felt so much lighter now. A huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. We had a home, a special home that would always remind me that nothing was more powerful or delicate than love and a good blend of pipe tobacco.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Very little compared to watching the sun set on Florence.
Seated outside on the patio of our home with a content terrier resting by my bare feet, I reconnected with a local leatherworker. An older gent who had been referred to me by Signor Palvecchio, the woodworker who I’d hired to complete work on the fourth designer trunk in my A & D—Arlo and Donvino obvs—collection of steamer trunks.
“You look intent,” Donvino said as he came up behind me, freshly showered from his nightly training session on the Arno. “Are there more orders for your trunks?”
I glanced at his hands, smiling at a bottle of wine and two glasses he was carrying as he neared. He bent down to claim a kiss and handed me a glass. I held it up so he could fill it as was our nightly tradition since moving in here last year.
“Actually there are four more. All from Secretary Martinelli,” I replied as he poured his own and sat down on a matching chaise lounge. Earnest got to his feet to greet him, tail wagging merrily. “Seems he and his new fiancé are taking a long vacation to Asia for their honeymoon and are gaga to use my trunks.”
“Good. They will like Asia,” he said, the tiniest bit of dislike in his deep voice. I suspected he would never really like Ricardo, and since my interaction with the undersecretary was limited now as I spent half my days at the main Bonetti Farms Olive Oil company office in Florence working in the labor relations department, his time spent with Ricardo was nil.
“Indeed. We should try to visit there sometime,” I tossed out as we both held up our glasses of blood red wine. “May God be watching over you and keeping you in his golden embrace,” I said in Italian, Donvino murmuring along in sync. Sadly, my accent was not much improved despite speaking mostly Italian all the time now.
“She is missed,” he said, his long legs bared to the setting sun. He looked glorious in the shades of a lowering sun. Pink, yellow, and darkest red shimmered on his skin. A water god in cargo shorts. “That is something that I wished to speak with you about.”
